The Unexpected Joy of the Ordinary

Learning how to be exalted by the everyday is the most important lesson we can possibly learn. In Catherine Gray’s hilarious, insightful, soulful (and very ordinary) next book, you may learn to do just that.

From the London Sunday Times Bestselling Author

We’re told that happiness is in the extraordinary. It’s on a Caribbean sun lounger, in the driving seat of a luxury car, inside an expensive golden locket, watching sunrise from Machu Picchu. We strive, reach, push, shoot for more. ’Enough’ is a moving target we never quite reach.

When we do brush our fingertips against the extraordinary a deeply inconvenient psychological phenomenon called the ’hedonic treadmill’ means that, after a surge of joy, our happiness level returns to the baseline it was at before the ’extra’ event.

So, what’s the answer? The Unexpected Joy of the Ordinary theorizes that the solution is rediscovering the joy in the ordinary that we so often now forget to feel. Because we now expect the pleasure of a croissant, a hot shower, a yoga class, someone delivering our shopping to our door, we no longer feel its buzz. The joy of it whips through us like a bullet train, without pause.

Catherine Gray was a grandmaster in the art of eye-rolling the ordinary, and skilled in everlasting reaching. Until the black dog of depression forced her to re-think everything.

Along the way, she discovered some surprising realities about the extraordinaries among us: that influencers risk higher rates of anxiety and depression and high-rollers are less happy.

Catherine Gray is an award-winning writer and editor who has been published in the Guardian, Stylist, the Telegraph, Grazia, The Lancet Psychiatrist, Mr & Mrs Smith, BBC Earth, Women’s Health and Stella.

Catherine’s hit debut book, The Unexpected Joy of Being Sober, became a Sunday Times top 10 bestseller within a fortnight of publication, and attracted positive coverage from the likes of T2, Private Eye, Woman’s Hour, Stylist, BBC Breakfast, the Telegraph, Grazia and the Guardian.

When she’s not writing, Catherine can generally be found taking twenty (identical) pictures of the sunset, wondering why she’s always the sweatiest person in yoga, fighting her ’spend it all!’ financial urges, or scanning the body language of strangers to see if it’s OK to pet their dog.

Find out more about Catherine Gray on Twitter and Instagram @unexpectedjoyof